Switching over to LMDE

So...

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu & Ubuntu is based on Debian.

Ubuntu is slowly trying to turn into a combination of Windows & MacOS...

Ick!

LMDE is a version of Linux Mint without the Ubuntu step.

Seems promising.

BUT, There are some oddities

Gnome Terminal

For some odd reason, the default keyboard shortcuts for the terminal don't actually all work.

Solution

Fire up the terminal, then select Edit / Preferences in the menus. Then select the Shortcuts tab. Click twice (NOT double-click) on the Shortcut Key you want to fix, then re-define it to either the same as it was (or something else if you wish).

vim

(as installed on LMDE) has mouse weirdness. Selecting text with the mouse automatically enter visual mode. This prevents useful things like using the mouse to copy/paste while editing in the terminal. (Visual Mode is stupid...)

Solution

Either enter:

• :set mouse-=a

during an editing session, or even better, put it (without the leading colon) in your ~/.vimrc file. (create the .vimrc file if it's not already there...)

• vim ~/.vimrc
  • set mouse-=a

If you tend to use vim via sudo a lot... (duh... Who doesn't?)

• sudo vim ~root/.vimrc

Sadly, this seems to turn off the colour syntax hilighting. More research required...

VMs

Unlike Mint 20, LMDE does not yet automatically install open-vm-tools. so sad...

Solution

• apt install open-vm-tools

Updates (after 2021/08/14)

Apparently...

Debian has updated & LMDE 4 is a little bitchy about the Debian InRelease name change.

It's fairly simple to fix

Open a terminal & enter:

• apt update --allow-releaseinfo-change

Traceroute is missing

Most places on the net say apt install net-tools...

Nope...

• apt install traceroute